One Precinct, 2 Very Different Murder Cases

Published: March 15, 1999

(Page 2 of 2)

Who killed Amy Watkins remains a question the police have not answered and her friends cannot comprehend. The rough outline remains unchanged: Last Monday night, she got off the D train at the Seventh Avenue stop, bought groceries on Flatbush Avenue and walked down Park Place toward her apartment. About two blocks away, someone apparently robbed her and stabbed her once in the back with a kitchen knife. Whether it was a random attack or one aimed specifically at Ms. Watkins remains unknown.

People who did not know her were shocked by the brutality of the attack. People who did know her were saddened by the loss of a person they described as extraordinary. She grew up in Topeka, Kan., and enrolled at the University of Kansas to become a painter. But a year and a half into college, she switched her major from art to social work.

''She would say she went into social work because she was more interested in the people who were painting than the actual paintings,'' said Jack Lerner, an ex-boyfriend now attending Harvard Law School.

She moved to New York last year to attend Hunter College's prestigious graduate school in social work. Her schedule required an internship, and she worked about 25 hours a week at New Settlement Apartments, a housing complex in the Bronx with a social service outreach. She counseled battered women, leading a Wednesday night support group. She led a candlelight vigil to protest domestic abuse in October.

At New Settlement, she also met her boyfriend, Adam Green, whom she began dating about four months ago. He lived in Prospect Heights, too, about a block from her. They began riding the subway home together. Usually, he said, they would take the 4 train. But on the night Ms. Watkins died, the couple took the D train out of the Bronx. They talked about Mr. Green's recent trip to Puerto Rico until he got off at 125th Street and transferred to the local. He was meeting his parents for dinner on the Upper West Side. He said that Ms. Watkins had decided not to come, but that they were planning to spend the following evening together.

Plans for a Career And a New Baby

The night before his death, Marvin Watson arrived about 7 P.M. at the East New York apartment that his girlfriend, Doris McKenzie, shares with her parents. She is 18, and she had dated Mr. Watson for two and a half years. Their baby was due in a month, and they were preparing for a baby shower the next day.

They had decided to name him Andre Elijah Watson. ''He was excited about everything about the baby,'' Ms. McKenzie said of Mr. Watson.

Ms. McKenzie liked that Mr. Watson was ambitious. He was a meticulous dresser who wore nice shoes and brand-name clothes like Tommy Hilfiger or Polo. He played soccer in Prospect Park as often as he could, but he also graduated from trade school as an electrician. He found work in Manhattan. He had plans.

With the baby coming, Ms. McKenzie said, he began saving money so he could move out of the projects into a place of his own. He wanted her and the baby to join him. They had talked about getting married but not yet. He wanted to join an electricians' union. He applied for a job with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He turned 22 in December.

Mr. Watson cooked enough curry chicken on the night before the baby shower for the 25 or 30 guests expected. The couple got a large room inside a nearby preschool to accommodate the crowd. Ms. McKenzie said the thought of so many friends bringing gifts for his unborn baby thrilled Mr. Watson. She spent an hour braiding his hair because he wanted to look just right.

Finally, at 2 A.M., Mr. Watson drove home to Albany Houses. He called to let Ms. McKenzie know that he had arrived safely, but her father answered the telephone. She had already fallen asleep.

Being Where She Wanted to Be

A line in the movie ''The Wizard of Oz'' has been transformed in the popular culture into a wry warning to anyone arriving off the hay truck in the big city: You're not in Kansas anymore. The quip takes on a cruel meaning in the case of Amy Watkins.

But her friends say Ms. Watkins was exactly where she wanted to be, doing exactly what she wanted to do. Her memorial service on Friday was attended by a United Nations of mourners. Walter Thompson, a fellow Hunter student, surveyed the crowd and understood why so many people came. ''She was just a nice person -- to everybody,'' he said. ''She was genuine. She would smile and you had to smile back. She was just a nice person. What she did she did with grace.''

Her best friend, Abbe Basin, said Ms. Watkins loved animals but was allergic to cats. Ms. Basin said her friend could not resist touching and stroking her cat whenever she visited. ''Amy comes over and takes all this medicine, antihistamines,'' recalled Ms. Basin, also a student at Hunter's School of Social Work. ''She would touch the cat and wash her hands and touch the cat again.''

Her father, Lawrence Watkins, a private school teacher who once was a Presbyterian minister, said in an interview that the attacker was probably the sort of person his daughter would have tried to help.

''She never dealt with people in the abstract,'' he said. ''She was really there, really listening. She achieved something, in the brief time she had to live. Her life was not half-lived.''

Facing a New Life As a Single Mother

Andre Elijah Watson was born Feb. 20 at 11:52 A.M. at St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn. He weighed 8 pounds, 11 ounces. He arrived fatherless, with a head of dark, silky hair and eyes as brown as chocolate.

Doris McKenzie's happy sleep the night before the baby shower ended about 7 A.M. A relative of Mr. Watson's called to tell her about the stabbing, and after some thought she decided to have the baby shower. She said she did not want to inconvenience her guests. They arrived and brought gifts and ate Mr. Watson's curry chicken. People tried to act happy, even when she cried.

''It was hard,'' she said.

Today, she is planning for life as a single mother. Her high school graduation portrait on the wall shows a smiling, glamorous young woman in a sleeveless dress. She began freshman classes at City College last fall, but she stopped to care for Andre. She said she plans to resume school this summer. She wants to become an architect. She said she doesn't blame anyone for her misfortune; her child is her gift.

She has filled a scrapbook with photographs of Mr. Watson and mementos of his life. ''So that when Andre gets older I can show him the pictures of Marvin and let him know what his father was like,'' she said. ''Even though, Marvin was not here, I want him to be able to say he had a father, to feel like he knew him.''

He will see pictures of a smiling man lying on the grass of Prospect Park with his soccer team, relaxing on a job in Manhattan with members of his work crew. Andre will also see a $2 bill on which his father had written a note to his mother:

''To my Empress

my Queen

my love

of my life

my baby mother''

There are no clippings in the scrapbook, no newspaper stories about Mr. Watson's death, because none were written. On Thursday, as she rocked Andre in her arms, Ms. McKenzie said she knew about Amy Watkins. She heard about her death on the news and in the papers. She didn't seem surprised or upset that the Watkins case had attracted so much attention while the Watson case had attracted so little.

''I guess because of the way she was killed, out on the street like that,'' she said. ''And nobody knows who did it. There are a lot of killings in New York, and I don't think all of them could be covered.''

Photos: Doris McKenzie, Marvin Watson's girlfriend, with Andre Elijah Watson, his posthumously born son. Ms. McKenzie's scrapbook about Mr. Watson contains no articles about his death, because there were none. (Angel Franco/The New York Times)(pg. A1); TWO STABBINGS, TWO LIVES Amy Watkins's death got wide attention; Marvin Watson's did not. Ms. Watkins, left, with children at a Bronx social service program; Mr. Watson with his girlfriend, Doris McKenzie. (pg. A1)